Who discovered the Americas?

It's possible that there have been several waves of settlers to the Americas.

RE: Who discovered the Americas?

From the BA Festival of Science, Exeter, UK.

The first colonizers of the Americas came from Australia, according to archaeologists who have analysed skulls from 12,000-year-old skeletons found in California. The finding contradicts the traditional view that the first immigrants were the ancestors of modern Native Americans.

The skulls, taken from skeletal remains found in the desert of the Baja California peninsula in Mexico, are long and narrow. "This is completely different to the Native Americans' rounder skull shape," explains lead researcher Silvia Gonzalez from the Liverpool John Moores University, UK.

The skeletons are housed by the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City. They were embedded in volcanic deposits that deteriorated the structure of the bones and made them difficult to date accurately. But the skulls' intriguing form has driven researchers to work out how old they are.

Gonzalez and her team announced their first set of results on 6 September at the Exeter-based Festival of Science, run by the British Association for the Advancement of Science. They have managed to radiocarbon date 4 of the 27 skeletons. So far, the oldest, belonging to an individual called Peñon Woman III, is 12,700 years old...